Tagged: Informant

Imagine you’re 18 years old and you commit a crime. A robbery. You go to prison at one of the only women’s facilities in the state. You get out a year later, on parole – and you’re back in the same neighborhood where you first got in trouble. You commit another crime. And the cycle starts all over again. That’s what happened to Courtney Samson.

It's the early 90s. Young people are watching MTV, their parents Twin Peaks. Maurice Caldwell is 22 years old and lives in the Alemany projects in Bernal Heights, on the same streets where he grew up. He works in an industrial warehouse in Hayward and likes to hang out with his friends.

But, he admits today, he was also a troublemaker. “I wasn't a choir boy,” says Caldwell. “I sold drugs, from time to time.” And, from time to time, he’d come in contact with police.

On today's Your Call, we’ll mark the beginning of the 55th annual San Francisco International Film Festival by discussing one of it’s featured films--Jamie Meltzer’s Informant.  The film follows the story of Brandon Darby, a charismatic activist turned FBI informant. Since 9/11, the FBI has built a network of more than 15,000 informants. How much impunity does the FBI have for entrapment?